


we hold each other

by sxldato



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, Canon-Typical Violence, Dean-Centric, Hurt Dean Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, Internalized Queerphobia, M/M, Mental Instability, Paranoia, Protective Benny, Purgatory, Purgatory Sex, Supernatural Illnesses, benny's a good bro, i mean it's purgatory that's fucking dean up so like, idk it's weird and gross, its dean guys cmon lbr, not a lot of fluff though sorry, that's a tag lmao i quit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-09
Updated: 2015-08-09
Packaged: 2018-04-13 21:26:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4537980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sxldato/pseuds/sxldato
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Purgatory doesn't agree with Dean, and it's hard to keep going when he's got a near constant fever and he's forgetting who he is.<br/>But he keeps going.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we hold each other

**Author's Note:**

> here's the original prompt i had written down:  
> "dean is sick as a dog in purgatory + benny takes care of him bc he's a good bro + also a little bit gay" 
> 
> sURPRISE it got a lotta bit gay haha bye  
> beta'd. i only fixed the spelling/grammar problems and added a few sentences to help the flow of certain parts, but otherwise i left it as the giant mess it is.  
> this is what happens when i try to switch up my writing style it all goes up in flames and i just get tired and frustrated  
> the title is from that one Great Big World song idk i heard it once on the radio and i liked it

There are no rules in purgatory, none except for one animal instinct; a tacit law that is heard in the cicada’s song and slithers around tree trunks, a chill on the edges of the wind, the tune of dead leaves crunching beneath bodies:

Being heard is death.

His enemy carries him through the woods, tells him not to look up, because the twisting tree branches looming above are dizzying and daunting. He is told not to make a sound, is hushed each time a groan escapes his mouth. He inhales deeply, pressed against a worn-down jacket, breathing in the scent of saltwater and whiskey, old spices and burning wood, and something not human.

He asks the monster if he’s being left for dead.

“You kiddin’? I _need_ you.”

Heat is coming off of him in waves, and he whimpers into his enemy’s chest as he fights against the fever-induced lethargy.

“Hey, none of that.” The monster doesn’t make a sound walking across the earth—this earth that always seems to be shifting in a way that makes him think the entire world is alive, that there are ears and eyes everywhere-- and it scares him.

This monster’s touch is soft, gentle. It brings back distant memories of quiet nights, when he always slept in the same clean bed, when things made sense, when he didn’t know that worlds like this were out there.

He feels hatred rise in his chest as he relaxes in his enemy’s grip, is angry with himself as he lets his eyes flutter shut against the stark light of day. 

There is so much peace within this unholy terror.

 

There is no shelter in purgatory, none except the soft ground between the roots of trees as old as time, and it is only shelter when he is not alone.

He is wrapped up in this stranger’s jacket, hunched over as he shakes and shakes and draws blood from his lips so he doesn’t cry out. He is soaked in sweat, and the water from the river is too cold for comfort as it’s scooped up and poured against his flushed cheeks, but he tells this creature that he’s not afraid to die.

Lifetimes pass, and the sun is moving so slow it’s agonizing. He can almost hear it ticking away gradually, like the hour hand of a clock.

His forehead is cradled in one large palm as he vomits into the dirt, and there’s another hand at the back of his neck. The nausea sweeps over him fast, rippling down his spine and leaving him trembling and weepy. He wipes away fragile tears with rough, calloused knuckles, because he feels hundreds of eyes blinking down at him, and because he doesn’t cry. (He’s not allowed to, not since the baby came along, not since Mom.)

“You gotta slow down there, brother.” It’s a soothing southern lilt, that voice. “Or you might bust a lung with how fast you’re breathing.”

He forces words out between dry-heaves, says he can’t, he can’t breathe, he doesn’t remember how.

A hand comes to grasp his, pulls it towards a chest that rises and falls steadily, that radiates something comforting despite its monstrousness—or maybe _because_ of it. He tries to follow, tries to remember how to live, but his guts are all knotted up and they won’t stop fighting their way up his throat. Every muscle from his hips to his mouth locks and contracts, and he breaks his own rule when the exertion of gagging draws tears.

“Don’t work yourself up like that. It won’t stop until you calm down.”

The smell of bile is sharp in his nose and it stings, and he turns away from the mess to rest against the stranger. He asks for it to stop, asks for it all to be over. He asks for Cas. 

“We’ll find him, don’t you worry.”

He is coaxed into drinking small sips of water, and he’s reassured with mumbled nonsense when it all comes back up, and then he’s being told he needs to try again. Eventually, it stays down. It shouldn’t feel like this much of a victory.

The stranger holds him through bouts of chills and pushes back his damp, dirty hair. He stutters a meek ‘thank you’ into the heartbeat that isn’t his, and it earns him a soft chuckle along with a tighter hold.

 

There are no friendships in purgatory. It’s dangerous to have empathy, to show compassion, to be anything but violent and soulless (and he is afraid because he is sure he’s becoming this way, too, and it feels _right_ ). No one is kind; no one except the odd sailor with fangs and a glint in his eyes. They’re blue and bright and clear, but sometimes they flicker. Sometimes there’s a gloom to them. But not when they’re looking at him, not once.

He asks for stories as they stare at the sky, looking at constellations that only exist there. It all looks like one big cluster to him, but the thing he thinks is his friend shows him the patterns with his finger pointing up into the dark. He’s just watching his hand, and tries not to move into the touch when it comes to meet his forehead.

“I ain’t sure what fevers feel like anymore. How’re you feelin’?”

He says he thinks it’s dropped. And then he’s rambling, explaining how if a touch of the hand wasn’t enough to tell, his mom used to kiss his forehead. And then he’s sad. And then he’s so angry he feels like he’s going to split right down the middle. His voice is hoarse but he keeps himself talking because that’s the only thing preventing him from sinking into the dark feeling in his heart, a kind of darkness that threatens to pull him down, swallow him up and suffocate him.

The odd sailor with fangs and a glint in his eyes leans over and presses a kiss to his forehead, and he falls silent.

“I always thought humans were kinda strange, you know,” he says, settling back against the ground. “Even when I was one. But holy hell if you ain’t the wildest I’ve ever met.”

He asks what he means by wild.

“You got a fire in you, man.” In the light of the moon, his eyes glitter, like silver or sea glass. “And not even this place has been able to put it out.”

 

And there’s certainly no love, so he doesn’t know what _this_ is-- these gentle holds and soft caresses and chaste kisses. He’s not sure how to feel when Benny takes his hand or puts an arm around his shoulder or touches his lips to his neck. It’s warm and cold and his heart is fit to burst.

Benny is everything that purgatory is not, and it all feels like a trick, like this world is playing a game of how badly it can screw around with him before he breaks. He’s starting to blend in with the scenery, all the dirt and grime and blood, and he worries that he won't be able to find himself again when they finally reach the portal.

Benny helps him remember, even as they slice monsters to ribbons, even as he falls into fits of hysteria from his fevers or shakes himself sore from chills, even as purgatory shifts and turns around them. Benny is always there, a constant, his personal Northern Star.

There are moments, however, of doubt. It isn’t that he doesn’t trust Benny—with all his heart, with its darkest corners and deepest veins, he trusts him—but he doubts the affection he shows, the devotion and care. He doubts what it means. He doubts what his own heart, with all its darkest corners and deepest veins, is doing in his throat, fluttering with weak and molting wings. 

His fever rises and falls, but it’s always there, and it exhausts him. When night falls, fear gnaws at his stomach, rocks him through soft laps of nausea that make his head ache. Benny holds him, cold skin soothing against his fever flushed face, tracing small circles into his back.

He doesn’t think he’s spoken for days. He hasn’t needed to; Benny just knows. But now, now he thinks he should.

He asks what they’re doing.

Benny’s hand stops, rests motionless in the dip of his spine. “We’re bustin’ out. You and me, together. And your angel, too, once we find him.”

He says no, no, because that’s not what he means. He means what are they _doing_?

Somewhere, a crow wails, and a scatter of sparrows takes flight from the treetops.

He’s angry. He feels screwed over. He tells Benny he’s done with this, and he’s not falling for the—the _Brokeback Mountain_ shit he’s pulling.

“I got no idea what you’re talkin’ about, Dean. And I don’t understand that reference, either.”

Benny knows exactly what he’s talking about.

He pulls out of Benny’s hold, tries to remain dignified, and fails for all intents and purposes.

Realization bleeds into Benny’s eyes and his brow furrows. “You think I’ve been lyin’ to you? Why would I mess around with you if we already had a deal?”

That had never occurred to him, and he suddenly feels very foolish. He’d felt used, he admits, and he’d been scared.

He wishes he hadn’t said it, wishes he hadn’t sounded so pathetic. His father didn’t raise no thin-skinned child, didn’t raise no desperate, lonely boy. John would be rolling in his grave if he saw him now, he’s sure of it, and he chokes up with shame.

He asks—begs—Benny to forget it, because it’s this place, it’s this place that’s driving him nuts, that’s it--

“ _Dean_.” Benny’s hands touch his face, thumbs on his cheeks and pointer fingers tracing his jaw, and his voice is clear and firm. “C’mon, won’t you look at me?”

The urge to draw away, to go down to the river and scrub himself clean of all this, is strong. It pulls at him, a receding tide dragging down sand and stone, the very earth itself, the ground beneath him. But he fights it and forces out an apology.

“You don’t think I’m really sweet on you?”

It’s dark, so dark he can barely see ten feet in front of him, but Benny’s eyes are bright, startling and blue. As long as he could keep looking into them, it would be alright, maybe, if he didn’t go back.

“Believe me, brother. I’m _so_ sweet on you.”

Those words, the way they sent a chill down his body, made him wonder how he ever thought otherwise.

Benny kisses him hard, and he hears his father in his head, those sharp jabs and that gruff tone, those nights over the phone filled with ‘yes sir’s’ and ‘no sir’s’ and the incessant sound of the broken clock that sat on every motel table, still trying to keep time.

He remembers being told to never grow up like _that_ , to be a man’s man, to be a _real_ man. He remembers never knowing what being a ‘real man’ meant. He still doesn’t know. Can he ever be a real man, even though his skin is soft and freckled? Even though there’s emptiness hanging between his legs where his dick should have grown? Even though x-rays and ultrasounds had shown testes _and_ ovaries in his body? Is his worth determined by how many breasts he touches, how low he hangs, how strong he is?

He hears his father scolding him, and it feels like a leather belt working like a whip on his backside.

He decides he should let sleeping dogs lie. That dog was long gone, anyways, and he’d been done lying to it ever since. 

Benny guides him down, stretches him out in the yellowing grass, peels away layers of clothes as delicate as flower petals. The skin on his hands is tough from years of fighting and working out at sea, but they’re the closest thing to heaven in this godless land.

As Benny drags his teeth along his throat, he warns him that if he bites, he’ll be bitten back.

“That’s a weak threat, darlin.’ I’m all for being bit.” The vampire’s pupils are blown wide, only a thin ring of blue left.  “But I won’t do nothin’ you don’t want.”

He stops breathing when Benny puts his fingers around the belt loops of his jeans. He’s afraid of what Benny will think, afraid of the potential for disgust. He watches in silence as Benny drags the denim over his hips and down his thighs, the fabric pooling around his ankles. He feels about ready to pass out when Benny hooks his thumbs around the hem of his boxer shorts and tugs them off, too.

For a moment, everything goes still. Nothing, not a single creature in all of purgatory makes a sound. It’s so quiet he thinks he can hear his blood pumping through him.

Then Benny meets his eyes, blue on green, and time starts up again. “Is this—you’re okay, right? This ain’t some kinda—“

He reassures Benny, tells him he hadn’t gotten hurt, that it’s how he’s always been.

“And it’s not--?”

His mouth twitches into what could be considered a smile. It’s not his first rodeo, he promises. It won’t hurt him.

Benny settles back into the dips and curves of his body until they’re touching-- chest-to-chest, a tangled mess of legs, and intertwined fingers. Benny tastes the way killing monsters feels; electric, metallic, and with bolts of adrenaline like lightning.

He murmurs into Benny’s shoulder, reaching for him with one hand and saying he can do him, too.

“This ain’t about me.” Benny’s lips brush against the shell of his ear. “I wanna take care of you.”

There’s no love in purgatory; they don’t have the luxury of being vulnerable like that. He struggles to remind himself of this, even as Benny renders him to nothing but a puddle of whimpers and keens. His near-constant fever is forgotten as his whole body is overcome with the sort of warmth that only comes with slow and tender sex. He, of course, works himself up and comes too fast, and it’s humiliating and he wants to sink into the earth and never return. But Benny lets him come back down from the high and starts again. They go once, twice, three more times before he has to tap out and end it. Benny kisses him as he catches his breath, the last twitches and quivers of pleasure ebbing out of his body.

It’s not like this, he thinks, with the women he’s been with. And that’s okay, because he loves giving them what they want and making them feel good; but he’s never been on the receiving end, and it’s amazing to be loved like this. He could be given all the words in the universe and he wouldn’t be able to describe it. It’s letting go, it’s trust, but it’s so much more than that. There’s so much in between that he can’t place, that he doesn’t understand.

He falls asleep in Benny’s arms still trying to put it all together. 

 

It’s weird, probably; to be lovers with someone you call a brother. Under any other circumstances, he might have given more of a shit.

But nothing else makes sense, nothing except the way their hands feel when they’re linked, their bodies’ writhing rhythms and patterns, and the electric current that passes through their eyes when they meet.

That’s all he has, and he’s too far away to hear his father’s ghost anymore, too submerged in the thrill of the pandemonium that this world creaks and teeters on, barely holding. He’s released his humanity. He’s stopped caring.

He savors his fevered hazes, lets his shakes and chills run through him, and as they strip down knee-deep in the river to wash the blood and shards of bone from their skin, he basks in the sunlight that comes with the way Benny watches him move. He’s never felt that way before; he’s always had a need to hide himself, even (especially) during sex. But with the way Benny looks at him with that barely controlled hunger, the way he’s able to pull every ounce of breath from Benny’s lungs—it makes him feel pure, brazen and bold.

If Benny is still a monster, maybe he’s one, too, because he loves everything that makes Benny dangerous.

They’re both dangerous.

 

The needles on the pine trees whisper, and the crows start speaking to him. The sun moves in stuttering jolts and leaps. He’s lost track of time.

When his freckles are lost under the dirt, Benny takes him down to the water until they’re both clean again. It used to sting him from the sheer amount of sin. He doesn’t feel anything anymore. He can drink it if he wants.

Nighttime loses the disturbances it had on his mind. It’s surreal, and the world shifts and spins, and he hears voices in the trees, but it’s beautiful. He can pick out the constellations.

He is content with the blur of slaughter and mayhem, the dizzying moments where everything tips to one side, the unadulterated rage that boils in his blood. But when Benny touches him, his vision slams into focus, and he’s given clarity for a few moments of ecstasy.

His lips are bloody from a punch to the mouth; his teeth had torn up the inside of his cheek, and he spits blood onto the ground. There are hands on his face and he’s being kissed, and he knows Benny’s doing it to taste him. The only difference now is that he wants him to.

He loses pieces of himself, drops them whenever they get too heavy to keep carrying on his shoulders. His father is a distant memory. The flickers and flashes of slick black metal and the revving of a car engine have no context. He closes his eyes and there are hazel ones staring back at him, and his stomach lurches as he forces himself not to remember. He can’t. He’s not the same person he was.

Benny carries him through, picking up the shards as he leaves them. He whistles old bluegrass and New Orleans jazz, tends to both their wounds, and he talks about home.

“Where’d you come from, Dean? Did you ever have an apple pie life before this?”

Between severing heads and taking shelter under trees and avoiding the heat and moving together in time with the tune of the wind, he tells him. It spills out little by little—the flames and the salt and ash, the cheap motel rooms and nameless towns, the weight of a gun in his little brother’s hand, the late night shifts at whatever diner he could be hired at, and the bursts of pride he felt at what he did because it was all for his family.

And then he starts talking about Sam, and everything falls apart.

Benny tries to understand, but the truth is that no one ever could.

He tries to forget again because remembering puts a strain on him that he can’t afford, and he falls back into the pattern of killing and surviving and fucking until he sees stars. But he can’t go back. The sedation has faded and he can feel it all.

And it's a relief, in a strange way, to return to himself.

“You with me, brother?”

He lets his blade fall to the ground and takes the pieces of him in his hands instead. Sometimes he has to just stand still and breathe.

“Dean.” Lips touch his temple, feather-light.

His mouth doesn’t smile, but his eyes do.

“I’m with you.”

**Author's Note:**

> yes, dean is intersex. i made the executive decision not to tag it for the sake of a twist. hopefully that didn't ruin the fic for you. if it did then that probably means you're an asshole so


End file.
